Political Correctness

Political Correctness; Limiting our Freedom Hello, my name is Ellen and I am aesthetically challenged. The inquiry of political correctness has been an extremely controversial topic in cultural circles for approximately 2 decades. Political correctness is the averting of words, phrases, or actions that could be offensive to certain groups of people who are discriminated against. Many people find “PCE” to be beneficial, in that it prevents insults and hurt feelings, but some find PCE as “baby-ing” our society and think it would be better to simply tell it how it is. Some politically correct phrases make things sound worse than they actually are, for instance “aesthetically challenged” sounds like a disease, rather than another way to say ugly. I believe that the campaign to promote the usage of nonoffensive language and politically correct terminology is has not been a successful agent for positive change because it is taken to extremes, someone will always be offended, and PCE limits our freedom of expression. The use of Political Correctness in an attempt to not offend certain social groups often does not work due to the fact that it is taken to extremes. It may be okay to call a “crippled” person “handicapped”, but calling them “differently abled” is taken too far and seems to be more offensive to the handicapped person then being called a “cripple”. Since when is it offensive to call a house pet “pet”? We now have to call our “pets” “animal companions”? As stated in Source D, “…these changes alter language to the point of obscuring, even destroying, its meaning.” Many in favor of political correctness would argue that these extremes are taken only to prevent hurting the feelings of others, my refute is that there is another way to phrase words to not offend a person without completely altering and destroying our language. Going along with how PCE is taken to excesses, another reason it has not been a successful agent for positive change is because no